Evolution Wars -- effect on America

I have already laid out a review of Edward Humes's Monkey Girl, which again I would recommend to your reading -- and to your purchasing through my Amazon bookstore by clicking here! I'd like to blog now on passages from the book over the next few days.
From the preface comes this statement that I believe is important to hear:

Americans are becoming more divided than ever on the question of evolution and he teaching of origins in our public schools, and while debate is an essential part of any healthy democracy, the evolution wars -- and the conflict between faith and science that they represent -- have been more destructive than nourishing to our children and our Republic.

The debate is problematic at one end because it inhibits scientific discovery -- and may be a reason why we must import researchers to do our research and teach our students. It also damages our children's trust in teachers, their curiosity about nature, and their interest in pursuing sciences. It's also damaging to their spiritual lives, for they feel they must choose -- science/intellect or faith. I don't think this is necessary, but such a false dichotomy is often present.
For that reason we need to hear this word, also from the opening paragraphs of the Preface:

There is no greater waste or tragedy than a war based on falsehoods; if the evolution wars are to continue, let the combatants be armed with facts, not fiction. (p. vii).

Keep in mind that Humes is talking about evolution/Intelligent Design here and not Iraq! One of the things that Humes does in this book is demonstrate the constant dissembling and even deceit on the part of the Dover defendants and many ID proponents.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I agree with you about the damage being done by the battles over this, and there's no doubt the fundamentalist (and often just evangelical) attitudes toward science in specific and academic/intellectual discourse in general.

But I don't think it's completely one-sided. Underneath all the anti-intellectualism in the creationist/ID crowd, I think there's a legitimate critique of scientism, something I've blogged about here. And the notion that the conversation is between progressive, rational pro-evolution folks and regressive, irrational antis is not quite on — science itself is quite conservative and averse to change on rational bases, as Thomas Kuhn argues in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Anonymous said…
Oops — in my first paragraph above, I meant "there's not doubt...those attitudes...are harmful".
Robert Cornwall said…
Chris,

I agree -- there are two different things going on here. In many ways we are caught between two ideologies -- scientism on one hand, which seeks to discount faith as irrational -- and "creationism" which seeks to exchange science for theology. Both are in my mind distortions.

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